The Fuck It List Ch. 04

He was still hard as a rock though.

***

Michael watched everything and nothing at the same time. It was sensory overload and yet, he could feel the passion course through his body in waves, slowly, as everything was brought to a very intentional simmer.

There were two couples in the middle of the stage. So much naked flesh just three feet from where the alcove that he shared with Miguel and Isabella stopped and the public space began. Here in the alcove, they were in shadow with black, sheer drapes. It created almost a cave around them. They could shut the curtains entirely and with it, sink into their own world and leave the circus outside. Of course, Michael realized with a dry gulp and a sudden exhale, that Izzy would never consider shutting them. She wanted them all to see the display, the show that was entirely Isabella.

The couples on the stage had swapped. The white, middle-aged husband had passed his wife off to another man. She was a voluptuous, red-haired beauty with a full, crimson pout and a heart-shaped bottom, pale and pretty. The new lover was a burly, bald black man who almost growled as he sunk his thick, strong fingers into her white, doughy cheeks. She shrieked, almost as if she were scared but he knew that it was really delight. Either way, Michael leaned forward in his seat and was unable to tear his eyes from the fingerprints the black lover had left behind.

Something for her husband to see later; a ghostly trail, a memory of the other and all the places that he'd been. Izzy's warm breath on his neck brought Michael back to their nook and the pile of black, velvet pillows that they had sunk into. There was the scent of three people's chemicals that mixed with the wine and with the electric sex that perfumed the air around them. "Someone's a voyeur," she giggled and drew Michael back into her arms. She didn't have to say, "keep your eyes on me," because her eyes did that for her. She was mesmerizing him with that sultry gaze, unwavering, unashamed. Isabella knew exactly what she wanted and she had taken it, right in front of Miguel.

Her husband watched silently as Izzy's hips undulated back and forth across the fabric, almost as if she were masturbating, using the couch to pleasure herself. Michael knew that it was possible and he also knew that she wasn't wearing panties. On the car ride over, Isabella had slid her dress up to her waist, to show Michael as well as her husband, as well as, Michael was quick to remember, the limo driver, that she was bare and warm and slick and ready.

9

Isabella guided Michael's anxious hand to her cunt as she turned to face her husband. "God, I love you," she whispered in a voice that was far away and echoed with a wildness that made Michael's cock thrash in his pants. He gasped as his two fingers made a quick study of her clipped trail of crisp pubic hair. Isabella was wet all the way up to her flat, taut belly and Michael felt the muscles of her inner thighs shiver as he wound his way to her soaking wet entry. The black-haired woman moaned into Miguel's mouth as Michael pushed two fingers deep inside, far deeper than the voice in his head told him that a first thrust should be.

He wasn't listening to that voice anymore. In fact, the sound had been turned down on everything. The black man on the stage was a million miles away. Even if Michael knew that he was on his knees, balls deep in the redhead. Even if he could hear her feet make a steady slap on his chest, a sound of skin on skin just like her plump cheeks did against his muscular legs as he ravaged her. There was nothing else but Izzy's wetness.

It was just the quiet rush of the chemicals inside, the bubbles of air, and the technicolor display of fireworks that made everything else fade to black. With his left hand, he fingered the wife and with his right hand, Michael unzipped himself right there, in front of the husband. Let Miguel see, let him see the thick, silver band of precum that his wife had teased from Michael's slit. Let him see the steady bob of the head of his pulsating cock. It would be the same cock that would soon replace the two fingers that were making her quiver now as Miguel sucked on her tongue and wrapped his hand around her throat.

Miguel released her with a bite that Michael knew would leave a mark and Izzy howled. She shook her head and her long, black curls rained across both men. Michael knew that it was a sound of pain but her pussy had gushed in his palm at the sensation of her husband's teeth. Good to know; she wanted it rough.

Isabella reached backward and her fingers naturally found the damp thickness of Michael's dick, as if she'd known it all along. As if she'd touched him a hundred times before. His breath came out in a whoosh and Michael wondered for a second if he just would cum in her hand, just like this. He didn't really want to shoot like this. Even if she was begging for his copious, salty load all over her forearm and her glittering, red nails and her tight dress. He ached to ruin the dress with a strange man's seed. He bucked his hips in response to that idea and groaned from somewhere deep in his own alcove. It was there that Michael could see in his mind's eye as he imagined watching as Izzy licked up a mouthful of his pearly discharge and then kissed her husband once more. Deeply and with abandon, covered in slick lust.

The air was knocked out of him.

Michael gasped, desperate to hang on to something but there was no way that he was withdrawing his fingers from her dripping snatch. Especially not as her bottom had just picked up the pace and she'd just squeezed so tightly around the vibrato that his two fingers insisted on playing. Her hand on his manhood was unbearably good and if he'd been able to draw a breath, Michael would have told her that she had to slow down. He would have insisted that she let him wait. He just needed a moment. It was almost as if her fingers had decided to take what belonged to them and his body wasn't sure if it didn't want to fight her for it. He wasn't sure when he stopped breathing but for a moment, Michael understood why they called it la petite mort. Was it the waves of pleasure or the lack of oxygen; either way, he had slipped into a place of absolute silence.

***

If this was death, it sure was fucking loud; much louder than Michael had imagined that it would be. Something squeaked, like wheels that needed lubrication. Someone far away in the background droned on about weather. On top of it, there was that voice over the loudspeaker, code something or other. He didn't believe in heaven or hell but he'd thought that the after life would be peaceful and empty.

And what was on his arm? Tendrils? Wires? Finger like waves of something that reached up his forearm and bicep and inched ever closer to his heart. He raised up with a gasp as he came back into his body with a rush of cold air.

"Oh Jesus!" Katie cried out. She sounded panicky and her long, golden curls flew back over her shoulders as she sat upright in the green, leather chair. She looked disheveled and Michael wondered if the chair hadn't served as her bed. Her eyeliner was two black rings around her eyes and mascara dripped down her cheeks as if she had sobbed and just wiped it off with her forearm. Even like this, hair askew, face a mess, pale and frightened, she was nothing short of lovely.

"Katie Kit Kat," Michael whispered the old nickname and found that they were holding hands. He thought he dead and yet here he was, fingers entwined with the blood pressure clip on his first finger nestled into her palm. There had been tendrils of her hair but there were also wires. There were needles that were poked into a bulging, blue vein and things beeped and dripped and it all came back, like the remnants of a dream that he'd tried to get back to after the alarm jolted him into the morning.

"Uncle Mike," she looked concerned and bit her bottom lip. Her blue-green eyes were decidedly more green when filled with tears.

Fuck, she must know. Pity was worse than never talking to her again, almost worse. Michael tried to sit up but it was impossible. He felt like an elephant was on his chest, some invisible, insurmountable object pinned him to the hospital bed. Dammit, he'd rather that she remembered him skirting out the door with his tail between his legs than pumped full of morphine. He didn't want her to remember him as a gray remnant of a person; barely a person, probably more cancer than anything else by now.

"I'm sorry, Katie," he apologized and rubbed his thumb across the back of her baby soft hand. He was sorry for everything. Sorry that he couldn't pull her hand up to his mouth and kiss it reverently, the proper greeting for a lover. Sorry that he'd left her alone. Sorry that he hadn't told her the whole story while they hid behind the gossamer curtains of her canopy bed.

She shook her head and her hair tumbled with her. Her golden waves cascaded across her shoulders and Michael noticed the swell of breasts in the front of a pink tee-shirt that clung to her mounds like a second skin. "Miss Congeniality" it read, across her ample bosom and he felt the stir in the front of his crisp, cotton hospital gown. Yes, she was, Miss Congeniality on top of everything else and now his only regret was that he wasn't going to have enough time to really get to know his goddaughter properly. "You should be sorry," she said in a somber voice, and then broke into a giggle. "Good thing I called you and the nurse answered. Otherwise you'd be passed out in here all by yourself," she shook her head no, like she was suddenly the adult and he was the irresponsible one. "Hasn't anyone told you not to take drinks from strangers?"

He gulped hard and it hurt. His throat was parched and he felt his Adam's apple scrape along his insides like a fingernail. "What do you mean?" he asked as his body pushed up from the bed a little. He was getting his strength back, at least enough to almost sit up. Maybe he'd be able to wrap his arms around her, a long goodbye before he faded away.

"You got roofied," she tried not to laugh but it spilled out anyway. Her breasts shook under the tee shirt, her cheeks were pink, her eyes were full of light. God she was young and new and perfect and radiant and Michael felt himself smile even though he didn't understand the joke.

The squeaky wheels stopped outside and the door opened. A nurse in navy blue scrubs entered the room with a cart that was loaded with a computer monitor and gloves and any number of contraptions for the sick and dying. "Mr. Fleming, I see you're finally awake," she barely looked at him before returning to the screen. "Hopefully you learned your lesson," she continued in a no- nonsense voice, strict and straight to the point.

Yeah, like the lesson about dying right as your life was getting good? You mean that one, you heartless bitch, Michael wondered to himself as he gave her a polite smile and struggled to sit up fully. He'd at least look her in the eye. "My lesson?" he repeated. As soon as he could stand, he was out of this place. He'd promised himself, no more doctors, no more treatments.

She approached him with the thermometer out like a weapon. It was a sharp, little dagger of metal, attached to a wire that she set in his mouth without asking. "Close please," she chirped, meaning shut your mouth and Michael immediately obeyed. There was something about the nurse that inspired that kind of mindless obedience. "Yes, your lesson. Don't take drinks from strangers," the nurse told him in a flat voice like she'd said it a thousand times before. "Your niece knows," the nurse gestured to Miss Congeniality and smiled.

"You mean, it's not the cancer?" Michael asked as soon as she'd removed the thermometer.

The nurse squinted and shook her head as if to say that he was crazy but she probably wasn't allowed to say that word here. "Cancer? What are you talking about?" she went back to the large screen on the cart that Michael imagined held all of the intimate information about the comings and goings of his body. "No, there's nothing like that here," she told him as her eyes scanned the screen. "Your blood work came back with nothing but an elevated alcohol level and the Rohypnol, of course. You should be fine in another day," she assured him before she backed the cart out, back to the hall and to the next patient.

Once they were alone again, Katie leaned in close, touching him and making him crazy. Her scent enveloped Michael and her soft breasts pressed against his arm. Then there were those eyes, those crazy, hypnotic eyes that pulled him in like an undercurrent. He couldn't possibly know that he was in danger until he was already much too deep. "I'm glad that I'm here with you," she whispered and her hot breath mixed on his cool skin and made the sparse hair on his arm rise up and take notice.

"Me too," he kept it short. He didn't want to scare her off with a full confession of just how much if a wreck he'd been without her.

"So where are you going when they let you out?" Katie twisted a blonde curl around one dainty finger, as if the answer mattered.

There was definitely unfinished business. Michael could hardly continue the aimless vacation to death if he wasn't actually going to die, could he? Fuck, what if Dr. Gregory were actually wrong? God, it would almost be worth it to tell him and watch the smug superiority melt into a puddle, leaving nothing but a white coat behind.

Then again, what if he got his hopes up for nothing? Just to have them dashed again. He reached for Katie's hand and wove his fingers with hers. Steady and sure and warm and alive; something worth holding onto.

"I have to go to Chicago, just for a visit," Michael paused, could he do it? Actually ask her instead of just wish that he had when there was an empty seat next to him? Asking made it real though. Like explaining to his best friend, only friend, why he was fucking his blonde mermaid of a daughter. "Wanna come with?" He said it fast, like he just thought of it, being the spontaneous, devil may care guy that he was.

Her crooked grin was almost enough to bring him to a full on erection, even here, even like this. "Can we go to Superdawg?" She jumped a little in her chair, as if the thought of a hot dog was enough to convince her.

"Anything you want, Katie Kit Kat," Michael promised.

***

Here he was again, Michael thought, breaking his promise. His backside, once again exposed in the ridiculous hospital gown as he sat on the stiff paper that covered the vinyl bench in the exam room. At least this time he was going to see Dave instead of Doctor Death. He'd rather take bad news from a friend any day.

"Mike, how are you man?" His doctor came into the room with a grin and a handshake that was part hug. He clasped Michael's forearm and Michael could smell the antibacterial soap that his friend must have used right before entry. Dave's face was furrowed with lines, laugh lines and forehead creases and a hundred other crags and valleys that he hadn't had when Michael first came to this office. Back then, neither of them had been gray either.

Back then, both of them thought they were going to live forever too.

"You tell me," Michael said with an involuntary shiver.

Dave took a seat on the short stool with wheels and flipped open the thick beige folder that had been Michael's medical record until he'd been foisted off on the oncologist. "Not a trace of cancer, Mike," Dave's eyes sparkled like a kid in a candy store. "Your blood work looks great," he let out a laugh, almost a snort. "I've got thirty-year-olds in here whose stats aren't that good."

Michael gulped down the explanation that he almost blurted out, couldn't help himself. Could it really be possible that the cure for cancer was to be found on the quiet end of the French Quarter? Two young Cajun girls would beseech the unknown for your life in the misty shadows of the candlelit shack.

No, it couldn't be that easy. "But Doctor Gregory said there was no hope," he trailed off. He would never forget that day and the stillness of the room, the suffocating quiet that choked down a lifetime of regret.

Dave looked around as if he needed to check that it was still just the two of them. "Well fuck him," he cracked a grin. "I mean, I know what they say about him, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe he had the wrong chart."

"But."

"I mean, he's human right?"

Michael wondered, not likely. Doctor Gregory seemed entirely alien, if Dave was asking.

He remembered now. Yes, the girls with the caramel skin and the braids had been a distraction, a sensual delight, plunged headfirst into voodoo and a carnal rush that made his blood boil. But, lest he forget, first came the statue, the offering. The altar of Marie Leveau, covered in trinkets and baubles and money and beads. The altar and the heartbeat that had emanated from it, or perhaps from the very ground beneath them. Michael had given something that held no worldly significance, no value whatsoever and yet, it was everything.

A life for a life.

"Michael, you okay?" Dave interrupted. "You aren't going to freak out on me or anything, right?"

"I don't know," Michael murmured, more to himself, more to the memory and the tremor of the other life that had passed through him that day. Was it faith? Was it the same drive that brought the faithful to their knees?

"Think of it like this," Dave wanted to provide a reasonable explanation for a miracle. "He was wrong but he did you a favor, right? I mean aren't we all supposed to live like we're dying? And here you are, fit as a fiddle and," his friend dropped his voice and elbowed Michael conspiratorially, "Maggie said there's a lovely blonde waiting for you in reception."

He raised his eyebrows as if to ask all the questions that came with someone as delicious as Katie.

Michael nodded, he'd keep it to himself then. The piece of paper that he'd left behind was just the old photo that he'd saved. A picture of himself, right out of college. He and a cubicle mate had taken turns with their feet on the desk, leaning back in the buttery, soft leather of the CEO's chair. For most of his life, that picture had represented everything Michael had ever wanted to be.

He gave it to Marie. Gave it up for a chance. Fuck, it had totally been worth it too.

"So who is she?" Dave wanted to know, eyes wide, ready for the salacious details.

Michael shook his head no, that was something else he'd keep to himself as well. At least until he'd had a chance to really kiss the golden mermaid of his dreams. "She's just my goddaughter, Dave," he assured the doctor. As if Katie could be just anything.

***

"So?" She asked him, as if they'd been having a conversation already. Katie sounded a little impatient, as if she'd been waiting for him to answer for a while.

"So?" Michael repeated with his hands behind his back. He was pressed up against the bedroom door and his heart hammered a million miles an hour. He felt like he'd just run a marathon but really, he was just alone in the bedroom with the girl he loved.

Fuck, that was something he never did either. Now that it wasn't just a fleeting thing, a wet dream wrapped in gossamer curtains and the glow of candlelight. Now that he wasn't half dead; where did that leave him and Katie Kit Kat?

"Don't you ever take a bath in this gorgeous tub?" That wasn't the question or the answer that consumed Michael's mind at the moment. The bathroom was spectacular, he guessed. The white, porcelain soaking tub was in the center of the master bathroom. It faced the floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the Chicago river. The light spilled across the gray and gold marble floor and made the whole room sparkle.

Michael had never appreciated it, he headed straight for the shower every time. There were so many little details that he'd missed out on.